US Edition The 53-year-old had pleaded guilty to 937 charges including aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape and assault.
He said he knew what he had done was wrong, but claimed he had been addicted to pornography.
"I am not a monster," he told the sentencing hearing.
The women described horrific conditions in the home, which Castro turned into a jury-rigged prison.
Michelle Knight, one of three women kidnapped and repeatedly raped for a decade before their escape told her abductor: "You took 11 years of my life away and I have got it back. I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all that has happened, but you will face hell for eternity."
Miss Knight stood just feet away from Ariel Castro in a Cleveland courtroom, the first time she's been seen publicly since her rescue from the house where she was held captive.
Knight, 32, did not face Castro as she spoke, but he glanced toward her several times after she entered the courtroom. She said she cried every night and that her years in captivity "turned into eternity."
Knight was the only one of the victims to speak at the hearing. Relatives of the other two read statements on their behalf.
She and the other two women, in statements, described horrific conditions in the Cleveland home, which Castro turned into a prison.
Knight was the first woman abducted by Castro in 2002 after he lured her into his house with the promise of a puppy for her son. Castro has pleaded guilty to charges that he repeatedly raped Knight and two other victims, and also forced Knight to miscarry after he impregnated her.
Following his guilty plea, Castro apologised for kidnapping the women and holding them captive for a decade in his Ohio home at a sentencing hearing.
"I would like to apologise," Castro told the judge as the hearing opened, adding that he would speak more later in the day.
Castro's lawyers urged the judge to prevent graphic photos depicting the sexual abuse of the three women or for any unnecessary details of their private pain from being presented publically.
"Mr Castro does accept full responsibility for his conduct," defense attorney Craig Weintraub told the court.
"What we wanted to avoid was offering up the details of salacious facts... That's why Mr Castro agreed to a sentence of life without parole."
The shocking case came to light after Amanda Berry, 27, managed to escape with her six-year-old daughter by calling out to a neighbour for help through a locked front door on May 6.
The women were kept chained by their ankles in locked rooms in Castro's house in Cleveland after being snatched off the street in separate incidents at the ages of 20, 16, and 14.
They suffered violent beatings and repeated rapes.
Images of the grim prison inside 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, where Ariel Castro kept three women for a decade, were shown in public for the first time at the hearing.
Police photographs displayed in court showed two rooms in which the women were kept had Disney film posters tacked to the pink walls, along with stuffed animals lined up on the bed.
Yet a closer look showed rusted iron chains running along the floor and heavy wooden boards that were used to block out the windows.
The women were fed just once a day and rarely given access to the bathroom, instead having to relieve themselves in plastic buckets that were “emptied infrequently,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.
More than 92 lb (42 kg) of chains, which Castro used to restrain his victims after kidnapping them from a Cleveland street, were found by officers in the filthy, darkened house.
Other evidence shown included a scrawled letter written by Castro on April 2, 2004 - two days after he had abducted Miss DeJesus – in which he admitted: "I am a sexual predator".
The defence team attempted to describe the letter as "a suicide-type note", but that claim was disputed by Andrew Burke, an FBI agent who took the stand.
Prosecutors also described how Castro kept a "significant amount of cash" in a basement washing machine, which he would sometimes throw at the victims after raping them.
On the rare occasions over the decade that he brought them out of the house, Castro would disguise the women in motorcycle helmets and wigs.
Relatives and neighbours of the former school bus driver have recalled that large sections of the house were padlocked and completely out of bounds to visitors.
Others said that Castro would take half an hour to come to the door if they arrived at the house unannounced and rang the doorbell. The house is to be destroyed by Ohio authorities.